哪儿来的臭名

The Grammarphobia Blog

How notorious is notoriety?

October 30th, 2011

Q: I was reading a press release from a specialty-food company when I noticed this sentence: “Montebello Kitchens soon gained notoriety as the source for nutritious, delicious, healthful, and flavorful specialty foods.” Is the language shifting or is this use of “notoriety” simply wrong?

A: The noun “notoriety” has meant either fame or infamy since it entered English in the 16th century, but it’s especially used, in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary, “for some reprehensible action, quality, etc.”

Although the published references in the OED suggest that “notoriety” has been used more often than not in the negative sense, the word’s roots are free of infamy.

The dictionary defines the word as “the state or condition of being notorious,” so let’s begin with the adjective “notorious,” which entered English in the late 15th century with “neutral or favourable connotations.”

The adjective is derived from the post-classical Latin notorius (simply meaning well-known) and the classical Latin notus (known).

However, one classical Latin relative did hint at things to come: a notoria was a written statement notifying the authorities of a crime.

It wasn’t until the mid-16th century that “notorious” took a turn toward the dark side—or, as the OED puts it, took on “depreciative or unfavourable connotations.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation for this usage is from the original Book of Common Prayer (1549): “Suche persones as were notorious synners.”

Getting back to “notoriety,” can the word be used today to mean fame as well as infamy?

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) defines it as the “quality or condition of being notorious; ill fame.” The adjective “notorious,” meanwhile, is defined as “known widely and usually unfavorably; infamous.”

(Speaking of “infamous,” we’ve written a blog entry about its use to mean merely “famous.”)

Although one could make an etymological case for using “notoriety” in a positive way, the word carries a lot of negative baggage. That’s why you were puzzled by the Montebello Kitchens press release.

Would we use it positively? Perhaps, but only in rare situations.

For example, we might use it to make a hyperbolic point: “Groucho achieved notoriety as a punster.”

Or we might use it to make a play on words: “In Hitchcock’s Notorious, a close-up of the key in Ingrid Bergman’s hand gained a certain notoriety.”

http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2011/10/notoriety.html

What's the difference between notorious and infamous?

Are these two words synonymous or is there any nuance between these two words? Though they are used synonymously in sentences and also followed by the same preposition "for". I want to be expertly responded to these nuances with reference to their adequate collocations.

Infamous is strictly negative. Even if it is about fame, this is always negative fame. It's almost never used figuratively, or tongue-in-cheek. It's negative fame, be it due to bad failures, or due to evil conduct.

Notorious is more often than not used as a more neutral "famous" - used in contexts, where you want to limit the positive connotation be it not to sound overly flattering or as tongue-in-cheek expression of limited praise. You can be a DJ notorious in clubs of your city, a notorious speaker at Sci-Fi conventions, a notorious hacker with three hundred security advisories published to your name. These don't strictly imply what you do is wrong, they just say you are widely recognized, and simultaneously don't try to trump up your achievements.

Notoriety is more about insistence, being known for repeating your activity, without actually creating anything very notable, while fame or infamy may be about popularity possible to gain with a single truly spectacular performance. Notorious is often used humorously, due to lack of inherent positivity (presenting a positive fame in mock sinister light) and implied insistence, stubbornness (becoming known despite failure to achieve genuine fame, implying poor quality of "production", insufficient to be called "famous".)

As result, fame and infamy are "stronger" than notoriety, and notoriety is more neutral.

Edit: an example of this usage for Mary-Lou.

The notorious Robert Downey Jr. known for his role of Iron Man, takes the character of Tony Stark, the incorrigible playboy genius philantropist billionaire out of the stage and adopts it as his own. Asked by a reporter, "Tony, could you... sorry, Robert..." - answers, oozing humility, "No, Tony is fine. Tony is perfectly fine." He hides snacks all over the movie stage and pulls them out during filming, taking wild liberties with the script and causing woe both to other actors and the director (and allegedly not just for "artistic license", but simply because he doesn't bother to learn his proper script!) Take the scene from "Avengers" when he serves peanuts to other members of the team, it's completely spontaneous.

[now, there is no doubt Robert Downey Jr. is simply a famous actor, but his antics, ego, and style make the word 'famous' simply miss the point - he's not loved for being a famous actor, but for being the notorious Tony Stark.]

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/162111/whats-the-difference-between-notorious-and-infamous

I have long bewailed the misuse of the word famous to apply to bad people, reminding readers that the word for widely known people of ill repute is infamous.

Now I’ve discovered that not only is famous erroneously applied to gangsters and murderers, but now the word infamous is being flung about as if it meant noted or simply, known.

The site that brought this latest misuse to my attention features a slideshow about male celebrities who are shorter than average. Each slide provides information under the following headings:

One or two of the celebrities are “infamous for” cocaine use, but the information that appears under the “infamous” heading for the others is nothing to be ashamed of. Here are a few examples of the behavior labeled infamous on this site:

One or two of the celebrities are “infamous for” cocaine use, but the information that appears under the “infamous” heading for the others is nothing to be ashamed of. Here are a few examples of the behavior labeled infamous on this site:

Actions that warrant the description of infamous include: burning people to death, performing surgical experiments on conscious children, blinding your architects, boiling your treasurer–that kind of thing.

The preoccupation with the celebrity of people–famous or infamous–has coined a new expression: “famous for being famous.”

In the past, the usual way to acquire fame or notoriety was to excel at something, whether writing, acting, or governing. With the advent of self-generated publicity, some people manage to become a focus of public attention for nothing at all. Frequently cited examples of this type of non-fame are: the Kardashian sisters, Paris Hilton, Kato Kaelin, Heidi Montag, Kelly Osbourne, and Ivanka Trump.

Here are some words other than famous or infamous that may be used to describe a well-known person:
well-known
prominent
famed
popular
renowned
noted
eminent
distinguished
esteemed
celebrated
respected
illustrious
acclaimed
great
legendary
lionized
notorious

Bill Bryson is a more popular writer on the subject of language. Discussing changes in word meanings, Bryson writes:

Surprisingly often the meaning becomes its opposite or something very like it. Counterfeit once meant a legitimate copy. Brave once implied cowardice — as indeed bravado still does. (Both come from the same source as depraved). Crafty, now a disparaging term, originally was a word of praise, while enthusiasm, which is now a word of praise, was once a term of mild abuse. Zeal has lost its original pejorative sense, but zealot curiously has not. Garble once meant to sort out, not to mix up. A harlot was once a boy, and a girl in Chaucer's day was any young person, whether male or female. Manufacture, from the Latin root for hand, once signified something made by hand; it now means virtually the opposite. Politician was originally a sinister word (perhaps, on second thoughts, it still is), while obsequious and notorious simply meant flexible and famous. Simeon Potter notes that when James II first saw St. Paul's Cathedral he called it amusing, awful, and artificial, and meant that it was pleasing to look at, deserving of awe, and full of skilful artifice.

This drift of meaning, technically called catachresis, is as widespread as it is curious. Egregious once meant eminent or admirable. In the sixteenth century, for no reason we know of, it began to take on the opposite sense of badness and unworthiness (it is in this sense that Shakespeare employs it in Cymbeline) and has retained that sense since. Now, however, it seems that people are increasingly using it in the sense not of bad or shocking, but of simply being pointless and unconstructive.

According to Mario Pei, more than half of all words adopted into English from Latin now have meanings quite different from the original ones. A word that shows just how wide-ranging these changes can be is nice, which is first recorded in 1290 with the meaning of stupid and foolish. Seventy-five years later Chaucer was using it to mean lascivious and wanton. Then at various times over the next 400 years it came to mean extravagant, elegant, strange, slothful, unmanly, luxurious, modest, slight, precise, thin, shy, discriminating, dainty, and – by 1769 – pleasant and agreeable. The meaning shifted so frequently and radically that it is now often impossible to tell in what sense it was intended, as when Jane Austen wrote to a friend, ‘You scold me so much in a nice long letter ... which I have received from you.’

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/71551/whats-up-with-the-word-egregious